Pforzheim students collaborate with OEMs for latest exhibit

Every design school puts its students’ work on show to celebrate the effort that went into it, but Pforzheim generally seems to go a little further than some. In February, course leaders decided to move proceedings into the centre of town away from the main campus, occupying two huge floors to showcase the myriad projects of everyone from those one year into their studies to final year graduates.

A key component to the course is the connection with local carmakers, who are only too willing to help set a brief for students to work on. This summer saw Kia, Geely and MAN Truck & Bus involved with both exterior and interior projects on the table. Course leader Kurt Beyer told Car Design News that there are obvious benefits to these kind of collaborations.

“Our Transportation Design department is famous for its close relationship with the industry; it’s a win-win situation for the students but also for the companies,” he explains. “The students get their foot into the door of the OEM design studios, while the company gets to know the individual students and can find out, beyond the creative part, if they will fit into their team in the future.”

Reflecting on this year’s trio of collaborations, Beyer adds that the best projects have led to full internships with either Geely, Kia or MAN. For students a little earlier in their studies, “they have taken so much knowledge with them,” he explains, “which gives them a great start into the next semester.” Indeed, nothing will prepare them better for a full-time job in design than sampling the real thing.

“For most of the students, this is the first time inside a professional design studio. You always can tell after the excursion that it creates huge motivation, ambition and team spirit,” Beyer says. “They learn how to work with a professional team, how to prepare and in particular how to present their ideas to an external team. It’s always a very exciting but challenging period for them.”

Beyer is the professor for both the BA and MA courses at Pforzheim and brings a fair weight of knowledge himself, having worked for more than 13 years as a design chief across different brands. For him personally, he revels in seeing the students evolve and improve on a weekly if not daily basis during these projects, observing how they handle high pressure situations and develop their own way of storytelling in front of a crowd. “It helps me to improve how future projects run, but even more importantly, how to ensure the students are well-prepared for a job in the industry. Students learn a lot from each other, but I learn a lot from my students too.”

From our conversations with students, OEM projects are worth their weight in gold and often lead to high performers securing a full-time job even before they’ve graduated – the dream, surely, given the level of competition at hand. With that said, let’s take a look at the projects created during this summer’s collaboration with Geely, which involved a visit to the Innovation Design Centre in Milan.

The brief was to look at the Galaxy sub-brand, envisioning a vehicle in 2045 that has been designed for a world where AI is omnipresent. Masters students in their first semester (MATD1) focussed on the exterior, while second semester (MATD2) students looked at the interior. All projects were fully digital, so if you’re looking for top tier illustrations, you’re in the right place.

Xinhao Wang MATD2

Dayeon Youn MATD1

Jaesub Kim MATD1

Moritz Deininger MATD1

Byeongin Oh MATD2

ChihChi Chang MATD2

Jeongtae Lee MATD2